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#BritishGP: Folger fired up for Silverstone battle

The 24-year-old German MotoGP™ rookie showed up in better condition on Saturday; making it through Q1 into Q2 this afternoon.

After marvellous summer days, the weather appeared very British this morning in Northamptonshire. It did not take a long time before some light drizzle came. Therefore, FP3 took place under mixed conditions but with a few minutes to go, the 5,900 metres long Silverstone Circuit had completely dried out. During this decisive stage of the session, Jonas Folger boasted by posting third fastest lap time. In tricky track conditions, the Yamaha rider also made a significant improvement from the previous day.

Folger and his Monster Yamaha Tech 3 crew used FP4 mainly in regards for tyre selection. A final decision, however, has not been made yet although there is a trend for the soft option of the rear tyre. In Q1, the astonishing MotoGP rookie showed his strength for the first time this weekend. With the second fastest lap time, Folger qualified for the second time hunt this afternoon, which decided the first four rows on the grid. In the end, his efforts were good enough for 10th spot though Folger is still suffering from a Noro virus.

Attention: starting time for the British GP is different as usual as the lights will go out only at 4:30 CET.

“P10 was definitely the maximum today, but I’m happy. I’m still not 100 percent fit but I feel much better now which I actually expected for today as I could rest well till this morning in order to recover as well as possible. Yesterday evening, I visited the Clinica Mobile where I received good treatment and then I had enough sleep. I will not do it any other way until the race, so I will be fit at 94 percent at least tomorrow.”

“I also felt on the bike that I’m in a much better condition. I was able to control the bike a lot more and I also was much stronger in terms of riding than yesterday because I was lacking power. During FP1 and FP2, I could not do that much proper laps so, it was actually my first outing with a MotoGP bike at this track today. Therefore, it was only now possible to get a feeling and to find the right lines today. Under normal circumstances, it is an additional load to ride in Q1 and make the jump to the second heat, but this time, it was even a help for me as I could do additional laps at the limit. In the end, I was able to set a strong lap time and in Q2 I could even improve on that.”

“Given the circumstance, we did a really good job today. Apart from the fact that we mainly tried to get into a flowing rhythm for this track, we were also working on the bike’s setup. In this regard, a change to the geometry has given us a significant step to the right direction. I’m very confident that we will be able to take another step tomorrow. Overall, it was a good day for us.”